by Eric Jackson-Forsberg

Eleven years ago, I had the rare experience of participating in a performance/installation called Happy’s Nightmare, a collaboration between Patrick Robideau and Kurt von Voetsch at the UB Art Gallery. My participation evolved from writing about the piece to writing in the piece. The dramatis personae might have read, “Eric Jackson-Forsberg: himself,” as I was acting as a writer or curator, installed in an obscure mezzanine of Robideau’s construction and running interference for von Voetsch’s performance. The notes I produced in this “office,” smudged with the grimy patina produced by the two artists’ materials, became the raw material of a later catalog essay, a textual by-product of the experience.

by Jack Foran

The writer Ernest Hemingway promoted the aesthetic principle of leaving things out, “and the omitted part,” he said, “would strengthen the story and make people feel something more than they understood.”